Worst crash I've ever had... worst crash you can possibly have

L

Lazarus18

In debt medical student
I really don't think there's anything that can be done, but I need to share my horror anyway. Maybe it will serve as a warning to others.

Tonight I lost everything. I plug a monitor, keyboard etc into my iBook and use it as my main computer. I unplugged it to take it downstairs and listen to something on the internet through my stereo. Put it to sleep and brought it back upstairs. Plugged in the various parts. It woke itself up when I plugged in the USB hub, played a brief second of the internet audio it must have had in cache or something, and then did nothing. No screen, no sound. 'Guess it froze up' I think, so I hard reboot it. When I log in it knows who I am and what my password is, but once it boots the dock is in its default position with default icons and all I have in ~/ is Library, and it doesn't even contain my stuff.

Everything is gone. Documents, Movies, Pictures, Mail, all my preferences and keychain... totally vanished into the ether. No trace of them anywhere in /Users poking around in the terminal.

If anyone has some sort of totally brilliant thought on recovering these I'd love to hear it. But I doubt that, so let this serve as a warning to back up very often. It's been far too long since I have.
 
Yes, filevault is enabled. But as root I don't see anything different, no .sparseimage. There is only my new Library and a 0kb .autodiskmounted file that has root ownership.

Tons of space left.
 
ok, search for a file with the name 'yourshortusername.sparseimage', if you find it your data are still safe... now, check if you can create a .dmg file from Disk Utility, or if you can simply open a .dmg file... if you can, check this link
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25695
if you can't, it's the same problem I've had on my girlfriend's machine, it's a problem with DiskImageMounter.app, I think you can reinstall it from OS X CDs using Pacifist, but you can also do an archive and install...
and after you do this, disable Filevault, I don't think you need it...
 
See above. I don't seem to have a .sparseimage. There is one that can be found for my wife's account, but not for mine.
 
have you tried logging in with your user account and disabling filevault, before checking if you can see the .sparseimage? also, check repairing permissions once from disk utility before searching... I'm try to recall what exactly I did to solve the same problem months ago...
 
Did both of those, still nothing there. Also the new Library has root permission, so that everytime I log on as my original user account any changes to the dock, etc are reset to default.

Thankfully my music and photos are on a different Mac, but for whatever reason even new accounts on my messed up iBook can't mount my music or photo directories from the server.

Something has gone horribly wrong, and I'm not sure what filevault has to do with it, but it may be to blame. Something similar happened last year, but not as bad and I think it may be related. I was again listening to an internet broadcast. Both times it's been a Yahoo Sports broadcast such as this one: http://media.yahoo.com/broadband/m/go/col/player?key=/tan/base/tan052205tal in Safari. Both times I closed the iBook to put it to sleep with the feed still going. The first time when I woke it up my dock was reset, my wallpaper was gone, etc. But all my files were still there. This time I did basically the same thing, but like I said it wouldn't wake up and I had to reset it, upon which I lost everything.
 
I think it's a Filevault problem just for my experience... maybe it's a stupid question, but have you tried rebooting once more? just because i remember that i found the .sparseimage file after a couple of restarts, I can't explain why...
 
Yeah, I've rebooted a number of times, mounted the iBook as a firewire HD on my other Mac, nothing makes the .sparseimage show up or get me any data back. I am beginning to lose hope. I suppose I could try Norton or something, but I'm not sure what it could do for me.

Another oddity (in addition to being unable to mount my network shares) is that I can't logout of my wife's account. If I log in as her it won't logout and when I tried to turn off filevault for her I just get the beachball of death when it says it's logging out to unencrypt her home folder.

I'm trying to decide if I need to reformat and reinstall everything, or just trash everyone in /Users and start over there.
 
It seems that your system is having some serious problem, so it's better to reinstall. I would go first with an archive and install, because the .sparseimage file, if it's still there, would remain in your hard disk, and you could try to mount it after the reinstalling...
 
Never done the archive and install. How do I do that? Is it an option I've forgotten about when you boot from the install CD?
 
Yes. Maybe it got misplaced somewhow? WOuld it help to just serach for a file that whose size is over a gig or two?
 
I'm going to give Diskwarrior a shot, but I'm not too optimistic. I don't think the sparseimage exists. I've searched for it a bunch of ways. Its disappearance is possibly my fault. Awhile ago I kept having two desktops pop up in my list of places to save things. I didn't know why, but saved something to each and found the second desktop was in /Users/.myshortname. Not having any clue what this was for I removed the directory to get rid of this annoying behavior. I know now that this is something filevault makes. Why I was seeing things in it when I shouldn't I don't know, and why it didn't make a new .myshortname over the intervening days I also can't say.
 
First, you need Data Rescue X.

1, Open Apple Disk Utility and choose open from image menu.
2, find yourname.sparseimage file and mount it
3, input your password and the pop up window give you some error message, don't worry, coz there will be a disk on the left side of your window
4, Remeber, you need finish these steps so Data Rescue can see this disk image.
5, Open Data Rescue X and from the drop menu, select that no name disk which is sparseimage disk.
6, Start scan the file and recover it. You will have everything back.
7, Good Luck, if you have any question, feel free to message me. :) :)
 
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